Dude Ditches Mac, World Moves On

july 26, 2006

So, this guy ditches using his Mac in favor of Ubuntu Linux. There's nothing big about that. But, I wanted to touch on the reasons why he left the Mac community. I also wanted to blurt out -- and yes, this is me speaking as a guy who works at an internet company -- desktop OSs are commodities, browsers are now the window to the world. Bryan's (aka. "dude") first reason for leaving the Mac community is, well, the Mac community itself. He complains that the Mac community complains too much. That the Mac community is a rude pack of primadonnas. I totally agree. But, you know what? The Mac community has always been like this, it has only just recently gotten amplified by the growth of the Mac platform. My feeling is that as the Mac platform continues to grow, the community will continue to diversify. You have to realize that the Mac community is a bunch of primadonnas who value design and art over pure computing functionality -- that is the reason why the paid more for a Mac than for a beige Windows box. Am I a Mac primadonna, damn straight. I won't get as rude or condesending as some of the l33t Mac users, but you know what, Bryan: Live with it. Bryan's second complaint is about Apple's business practices. He complains that Apple likes to copy software ideas (ie. Confabulator and Watson). Yes, I find that bad and I feel for the developers. He even points out that Microsoft does the same thing, but he tries to lessen it by saying that Microsoft outright buys software companies instead of just copying their software. I'd say, that's a bunch of hooey -- take a look at Microsoft's push into the browser market with IE, their upcoming push into the security market, and other such moves. Microsoft takes no mercy on software companies either. But, since he is moving to Ubuntu, none of these arguments matter. His last reason is that he dislikes the bugs in Mac OS X and the othe products that Apple has been releasing. He complains that the crashiness and bugginess of Apple software is on the increase. I haven't personally seen much of this, but I have been a Mac user for a long time (since System 7) and I am used to Apple software being slightly buggy -- and hell, what software is not buggy, especially in these days of large million line apps and OSs? One thing I want to ask is: Why only one OS? I have three boxes at home. My Powerbook is my desktop replacement and my main box. But, I still have a Windows box for when I absolutely need to run some piece of software that hasn't been ported to the Mac. I am writing this post from my SuSE Linux notebook. Again, OSs are not as important anymore. Yes, there are still stuff that you have to do on a box (like making Podcasts, which Bryan says he does), but for most people their lives are spent in a web browser. Does the OS really matter to them? What OS do you use? Do you use multiple ones? And does the OS matter to you?


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